Cumulative population-level effects of habitat loss on seabirds ‘Kader Ecologie en Cumulatie 4.0’

Abstract

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Quick scan of cumulative impacts on the North Sea biodiversity : with a focus on selected species in relation to futuredevelopments in offshore wind energy

“…However, there are some limitations in spatial coverage of the distribution with GIS data considering ecological components and human activities for the Greater North Sea. For example, for the selected bird species, which are also KEC 4.0 species (Potiek et al, 2022;Soudijn et al, 2022), the spatial distribution is only available for the Central and Southern North Sea. The analysis for the quick scan therefore makes it clear whether the results relate to the Greater North Sea or the Central and Southern North Sea.…”

“…(2022) based on monitoring data from ESAS + MWTL for the period 1991-2020. These bird species density maps were used for assessment of collision mortality and habitat loss due to offshore wind farms by respectively Potiek et al (2022) and Soudijn et al (2022) and were also used for the 16 selected bird species in the current quick scan.…”

“…To account for the sensitivity of each selected bird species to collision and displacement (Effect Potential) species specific information was used from literature (Bowgen & Cook, 2018;Cook et al, 2018;Leopold et al, 2014;Potiek et al, 2022;Soudijn et al, 2022), see Table 3. To account for the sensitivity to collision, use was made of avoidance rates (the proportion of birds taking action to avoid collision).…”

“…To account for the sensitivity to displacement, relative displacement risk scores (RDRS) were used that reflect the fraction of exposed birds that will die from displacement. RDRS were derived by Leopold et al (2014) and also used by Soudijn et al (2022) in a KEC 4.0 study The RDRS were used as displacement risk, i.e. the percentage of birds overlapping with a wind farm area that will die from displacement (which is caused by the pressure "disturbance (visual) of species") 1), benthic trawling poses the highest risk for the ecosystem components of the North Sea for the base line as well as future developments (Figure 6).…”

Further development of the ‘Acceptable Level of Impact’ framework for effects of offshore wind farms on seabirds : extended method development and sensitivity analysis

“…The ALI methodology was first used for the calculations of the "Aanvullend Ontwerp bij het Programma Noordzee 2022-2027" (Potiek et al, 2021;Rijksoverheid, 2021;Soudijn et al, 2022). After this report, the methodology was reviewed in November 2021 -January 2022.…”